Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philately

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This banner announces WikiProject Philately. This is an ACTIVE WikiProject that is developing Wikipedia's coverage of the science of philately. See our WikiProject Philately pages for details of current tasks.

Archives at : Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3

Contents 1 Changes Made or Requested 2 Titling again 3 Russian stamp copyright 4 The Philately Portal 5 Postal orders 6 Project Directory 7 Wikified world stamp catalog 8 Bermudian Stamps - Info Request 9 George Pataki 10 Lewis Carroll 11 Dorothy Wilding 12 Stablepedia 13 Columbian Issue 14 Problem page 15 Notability criteria for commemorative issues 16 Wikipedia Day Awards 17 Philatelic historic texts on wikisource 18 Participants 19 Currencies 20 Promoting the project 21 VR official 22 Philatelic stubs

[edit] Changes Made or Requested

All changes now in place and there are also the two "speedy requests" at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Speedy#Add_requests_for_speedy_renaming_here

Re the Philatelists merge request, would it be worth asking for a resolution asap? I notice it has been there for over six days now and the last input was two days ago. --BlackJack | ^{talk page} 15:54, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, the merge has been done but the two "speedys" don't look very quick to me! --BlackJack | ^{talk page} 11:45, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

All the category changes have been completed and as no one has raised any further points re the preceding topics on this page, I have moved them all into Archive 3 (see above). --BlackJack | ^{talk page} 15:01, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

--BlackJack | ^{talk page} 11:55, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Titling again

Sorry, I know this has been beat to death already, but after seeing History of postage in China etc, I just don't think the titling is right. The term "history of postage" is nearly unknown to Google, and is not used in anything in my philatelic library, so it's kind of a neologism, which WP generally discourages. Also, "History of X" articles are typically narratives, but the philatelic articles include both narrative and general data. "Postage stamps and postal history" is a mouthful - I waffled a long time before adopting it - but it has the advantage of accurately covering the range of topics found in an overview, the use of standard terminology improves Google hit rates, and it facilitates division into two articles when the amount of material warrants. Stan 16:14, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

• I agree - although I have started using the different titling. I think I have perhaps over-reacted to the challenge we had around the length of "Postage stamps and postal history of X, Y and Z". Wikipedia's limit on a title length is 255 characters, which is very long indeed, so I think really we ought to stand up to any challenges on the length and insist on meaningful usage. One of the problems is that numerous "Postage stamps and postal history" titles have been redirected and I don't think they can be used again, especially if a country's name has taken over the article. But I'm going to start using the combined name again unless an article is specifically about only one of the two topics. --BlackJack | ^{talk page} 11:55, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

My adminly powers suffice to rearrange anything as desired, just point them out to me. Stan 12:57, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Looks like Stan is right on this one, so using the original title system and dividing into postage stamps and postal history if necessary seems like the best way to go. ww2censor 13:55, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Russian stamp copyright

Folks here might be interested in this posting on the main interwiki listserve. Can anyone here comment on this? Thanks, Walkerma 17:27, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I saw the message, but don't really have an answer. In these days of people keeping a very close eye on copyrights, I'd want to see an example of the document where the stamp artist/designer signs away personal rights, plus some kind of independent confirmation, such as an official email from an official working for the Russian post. We've had several bouts of confusion on commons for stamps of some other countries, where people quote laws that seem to be contradicting each other. Stan 18:24, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! This sort of ambiguity is a shame, because I know stamps are a wonderful potential source of copyright-free pictures. One chemistry textbook I often taught from uses stamps for all the pictures of famous chemists, presumably for this same reason. Thanks, Walkerma 05:49, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

My suspicion is that publishers of textbooks are comfortable that those are fair uses for textbooks, and don't worry about them further. In lieu of a well-heeled legal department, we restrict ourselves to really clearcut situations. If it's any consolation, stamps are not actually that good of a source, since designers and governments alter the images for their own purposes. For instance, one of the famous jazz musicians was never seen without a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, but the the USPS airbrushed it right out, so as to not seem to be promoting smoking! Stan 11:10, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Philately Portal

I see the Philately Portal does not ever seem to get updated and there are several redlinks on it. Is there something I can do to help? AdrianMastronardi seems to have abandoned it as I left a message for him nearly 2 months ago, about something else, but he never responded. I don't know anything about editing the portal page but would do something if I knew how. Cheers ww2censor 15:57, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I think I figured out how to make changes and have made a few additions and corrections. What do we want to add here? ww2censor 16:21, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the general theory is to think of this as a sort of philatelic Main Page, where you highlight whatever is most interesting at the moment. If you like, you can try owning it for a while, and rotate through what you find most interesting. For many readers this is where they get a first impression of WP's stamp coverage, so "intriguing to the general public" is a good criterion. Stan 20:43, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Portals are a very useful link you can give to people in a particular field - if one of you is interviewed about Wikipedia stamp content by Linn's Stamp News, for example. I help out a bit at the Chemistry Portal. There we have a (small) selection of featured articles that we rotate through, one per month. I would suggest compiling a list of well-written articles on interesting stamps that you can use, then it's not much work each month to post the next one on the list. As Stan says, interesting is good, things like the British Guiana 1c magenta would go down well. Walkerma 02:46, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Hope you like the portal now. I have prepared one Stamp of the month suggestion based on your British Guiana 1c magenta comment. ww2censor 16:47, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Postal orders

Hey, just wondering, should postal orders (of mainly British decent) be within the grounds of this project? If so, please check out Category:Numismatics, there are numerous postal orders there. Thnx Joe I 03:01, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Interesting question! For what it's worth postal orders are one of the few post office produced and sold products that actually are a cross over item because while they are essentially a numismatic item, they often have postage stamps affixed to make an additional value to the issued item. By way of illustration look at this image I uploaded that is used in a number of postal order pages. My interest is in the stamps and not so much in the numismatic aspect of this item. ww2censor 03:30, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok, so all postal orders belong to both numismatic and philately groups? I didn't even know they were "essentially a numismatic item". So should all postal orders be marked as in Category:Numismatics as well? Are they only a British product? Joe I 04:00, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

FWIW have a read postal order and looked at the amount of postal order pages in the numismatic category, though some are poorly written. I would defer to others as to including them in a philatelic category as well. Cheers ww2censor 04:41, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I think they're very marginal; can't remember any of my philatelic rags having articles about them, although there have probably been some. I would make the category descend from Category:Postal system and Category:Numismatics, and add an xref from the philately portal, for the lost and confused souls who somehow find them more interesting than stamps. :-) Stan 13:20, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project Directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages:

• User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory 2,
• User:Badbilltucker/Philosophy and religion Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Sports Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory/United States, (note: This page will be retitled to more accurately reflect its contents)
• User:Badbilltucker/History and society directory, and
• User:Badbilltucker/Science directory

and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 22:45, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now moved the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. 207.160.66.129 14:43, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikified world stamp catalog

User:Eclecticology reminds me that I long ago proposed a wiki for a world stamp catalog at meta:Wikistamp. I haven't pursued it because it needs critical mass to get going - I estimate 3-5 people, a couple of whom need to know enough about software and web programming to build all the infrastructure bits. Since that proposal, there has been an attempt at wikibooks - wikibooks:World Stamp Catalogue, but woefully underpowered for the scale of the task being attempted. Are there enough people here now to make a try at doing it right? Stan 17:41, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like an overly ambitoius project considering there are approximately 10,000 new stamps each year worldwide, not to mention all those already issued. Another serious consideration is that a stamp catalogue really needs to have images and besides the copyright issues of stamp images that will likely preclude any approach to completeness, obtaining access to enough images would be neigh impossible even if the copyright issues were overcome. As a postal historian, I actually have little interest in stamp catalogues and therefore limited knowledge, so you can't count on me for much input. All the best of luck but be practical in your outlook. ww2censor 04:20, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

My "secret sauce" is custom software that can work with partial data and knows a lot about the content, for instance it can sort all the currencies of the world, and validate twisty multiple overprint situations. I've been focussing on text because it's searchable; I expect a stamp-specific wikibook would have to establish its own fair-use rules, and copyrighted images to be uploaded there alone, not to commons. Stan 12:46, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Stan for replying. I should have looked here before waiting in vain at the SYS page; that's my own damn fault. This is indeed an ambitious project, but the general success of Wikipedia makes it hard to believe that anything is "overly" ambitious. Doing this as a Wikibook may indeed be a more valid option than having it here in Wikipedia. Three to five people would seem to be a very small critical mass, but I can appreciate how difficult it can be get to even that small number. Although I have a good grasp of the philatelic concepts, and a somewhat large accumulation of philatelic literature to back it up, I do find that dealing with software, tables and images can be onerous. I agree that the project will need to develop its own fair-use rules without going through commons. My general impression is that most governments' copyrights on stamps are quite flexible, or there would be no stamp catalogues at all. We've gone a long way from the situation in the 1930s when the US Secret Service saw any copying of postage stamps (even in black and white) as tantamount to counterfeiting.

Postal history is interesting, but I agree that it opens a lot of points that go well beyond the stamps themselves. As such it opens up an entirely new set of complications. The 10,000 new stamps per year poses a formidable challenge, but my own feeling is that new issues should not be the priority at this stage. Anyone is still obviously free to work on them, but it would be nice to have a country's past issues brought up to date. Dealing with new issues would then be a maintenance issue. It's still less than a week since the last US election, but I'm sure that the interested Wikipedians are well on their way to establishing or updating articles for all the current congressmen. This is not as big a task as catching up on the biographies of former congressmen, and organising that information in an accessible way. Eclecticology 22:47, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bermudian Stamps - Info Request

The new article Girlguiding Bermuda includes a section on a 1969 issue of stamps on the theme of Girl Guides. The information is incomplete and if anyone has any further information, it would be welcomed. Kingbird 05:03, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] George Pataki

I posted this on the George Pataki talk page but received no response. I encountered some articles in the late 1970s and early 1980s by a George Pataki in American Philatelist. These are mostly about Romanian stamps. Can anyone confirm whether this is the same George Pataki who is governor of New York. Eclecticology 00:37, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lewis Carroll

The comment, "Lewis Carroll invented what may be described as the world's first stockbook, The Wonderland Postage-Stamp Case, which contained 12 pockets for stamps of different value," appears at http://www.rpsc.org/Library/kaulbach/more8.htm I would be interested if anyone is familiar enough with the history of stockbooks to comment on this. Another site claims that he had a patent (British?) on this but does not elaborate. Eclecticology 00:45, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dorothy Wilding

I noticed that our project is seeking information on Dorothy Wilding. I located a couple sources and placed what I found at Talk:Dorothy_Wilding. Keesiewonder 14:53, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 02:29, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

[edit] Columbian Issue

I've put something together on the Columbian Issue ... I was shocked when I realized that one of the most popular and familiar sets of US stamps was just a redlink. There's quite a bit more work to do, I think, including comments about the modern "re-issue" (and its foreign sister releases). Probably more could be said about the envelopes and postal cards, too, but I've never been a postal stationary collector. Anyway, its better than nothing. Serpent's Choice 11:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Nice! I'll make a couple comments on the article's talk. Stan 14:07, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problem page

US stamps was created a few days ago by new user User:Serjmooradian who also uploaded a mix of PD and FU stamps for it. I'm not quite sure what to do with it; simplest would be to redirect to US overview article, and maybe find uses for a couple of the fair-use images. There is a wikibook project for a stamp catalog, which is about the closest fit for the page as-is. Stan 15:38, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you Stan. ww2censor 03:24, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Notability criteria for commemorative issues

See Chembai Stamp. Does this commemorative issue require a separate article? The stamp itself has little intrinsic value. Thanks Parthi ^{talk/contribs} 22:51, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

This is certainly a non-notable stamp as are about 10,000 others each year (in recent years anyway). So it seems like a speedy delete might be in order, but Stan would be a better judge of what action to take. ww2censor 03:24, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

But just think, with enough stamp articles we could take over! "Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia of Stamps and Some Other Stuff" :-) In this case, the right thing is simply to redirect to Chembai's article. We do need to think about notability criteria, Category:Postage stamps is rather a mixed bag. I'd say every definitive series is automatically notable. A country's first commem is probably notable, and any that have a "story", like the US Elvis stamp. Stan 06:41, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Should we nominate this for merge/AFD? - Parthi ^{talk/contribs} 07:01, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

There is more behind this, User:Venu62 (a.k.a Parthi) has malicious intent in putting this up to you folks (my own personal opinion) - see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#User_reverting_image_copyvio.2Fno-source_tags. I created the article for the stamp after User:Venu62 removed it from Chembai citing some lame reasons. I'm OK with the stamp being moved again to Chembai article. ­ ॐ Kris (☎ talk | contribs) 12:09, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

What is it with Indian stamps anyway?!? If you want the stamp in the person's bio, even one sentence about why they got a stamp, or something about the stamp's design, is really all it needs to be legit fair use. I don't understand why everybody is unable to write anything about the stamps they include on pages. Stan 20:43, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Stan for pointing this out, I updated the description of the picture to justify fair use. ­ Kris (talk) 15:40, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 16:50, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Philatelic historic texts on wikisource

Hello. I began to put old texts about philately on the Wikisource in French (see my user page there for the first two), with the reproduction of two well-known texts in French philately. Two questions :

• Do you know if there are some texts on the Wikisource in English (or other languages) ? I search but may have forgotten to look at some places.
• What do you know about letters Rowland Hill's son wrote to postal authorities to obtain the first stamps of these countries for his father's collection ? I have one page of the letter to the French post in Yvert et Tellier's specialized catalog of France (page 32). Thank you for some hints in my quests. Sebjarod 19:54, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

For those interested (French philatelic history) : s:Pearson Hill letter to French Post (and its traduction in French). Sebjarod 12:26, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Participants

It looks like we are losing members due to retirement, lack of interest, or whatever other reason, so I intend to soon move the list of participants around to indicate active participants and other associated members. Hope you all (whoever is still watching this page) agree. If you have any ideas for reactivating interest in philately, I am willing to help in any reasonable way possible. I already manage the Philately Portal but that does not seem to bring in any editors. Maybe you have some ideas Stan. Cheers ww2censor 16:17, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I guess I'm not clear on the reason to tinker with the participants list - seems hard to second-guess who is "active" and who is not. I'm doing less stamp stuff myself right now because I have a horrendous upload backlog and the desert wildflower season is impending (raining as I type, yay). My vague idea for increasing interest is to write an article on WP for the APS journal; most philatelists are likely unaware that WP has a stamp-related section. Stan 01:04, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Excellent idea! Even a handful of knowledgeable editors from APS would be a big boost. I should add myself to the participants even though I have currently diverted my attention to the World Stamp Catalogue on Wikibooks. You've done a fair bit of photography; any experience with uploading images of watermarks? Eclecticology 01:50, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, the two in watermark are my doing. I just scanned with a black background, and then did extreme contrast increase in software. Haven't had much luck with the fainter watermarks tho, presumably I'm not alone since the catalogs have line drawings for those. Some day I want to try putting the stamp in a baggie with watermark fluid, see how that works on the scanner, or perhaps try a macro photo into the watermark tray. Stan 13:56, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Good idea Stan. I just thought that moving people who had not made any Wikedits for 6 months seemd like a reasonable benchmark. A couple people who might soon meet that criteria have also not responded to direct talk page requests which seems to indicate they have moved on without noting that fact. For the moment I will not do anything. Cheers ww2censor 03:12, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Currencies

Hi,

I come from Wikipedia:WikiProject Numismatics and just found out about this wiki project. For my tenure at Wikipedia, I found that articles at Category:Compendium of postage stamp issuers contain links to currency units, without disambiguation, like dollar. I'd like to ask for your assistance. It would be great if these links can be fixed. I can help too. Let me give you some references: Category:Circulating currencies, Category:Modern obsolete currencies. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 00:58, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Promoting the project

I have been adding the {{Philately}} tag to many talk pages as there were only a handful up to a few days ago. The total now exceeds 260 with many more to add. If you pass by pages that are missing the tag please add it or if you have time take a category and do a bundle. Thanks folks ww2censor 15:01, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] VR official

So it seems that the VR official is a "non-notable" because an uninformed busybody noticed that it only has one source (never mind that it's the SG specialized) that seemed to have only one online mention (one boggles at how anyone could be so bad at search). Anyway, it would be good to have another reference or two if someone knows of some - my British philatelic lib is sadly lacking - plus feel free to add your own witty comebacks to the article's talk page. Stan 03:39, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Added one link to the British Postal Museum and Archive, a very reputable reference indeed. ww2censor 04:52, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Philatelic stubs

Verne Equinox has removed several philatelic stubs from articles that IMHO are still stubs due to the lack of detail. If you don't agree with some of his edits, please restore the stubs if they are appropriate. However, he has been adding some stubs and other decent edits, so his actions are mostly constructive other than the stub removal. Cheers ww2censor 02:36, 13 March 2007 (UTC)